Delicious Digest #11 - Princes, Clouds, and Dark Patterns
A weekly newsletter of what I’ve seen in (mostly) tech & games and thought was interesting. This week: Princes, Clouds, and Dark Patterns.
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😳 Must reads of the week
◼ How to delete what Facebook knows about your life outside of Facebook. Useful. Link
🗞 News
◼ Groq is the second AI hardware startup to debut their AI Chip in the Cloud. This type of dedicated AI hardware will grow a lot in the next years, both on-device (phones, watches, toys, …) and in the cloud. AI is everywhere. Link
◼ The Jeff Bezoz Phone Hack Saga. 10 bucks says this will be a movie in less than 5y. A Crown Prince, the richest man in the world, an affair, a hacked iPhone (or was it?), a love affair… the story has got it all! John Gruber has a succinct summary. The morale: if you’re the richest billionaire in the world, don’t open videos in Whatsapp messages on your phone… Duh. Link
◼ Dark UI patterns in Tesla’s iPhone app lead to accidental “butt-dial” purchases of $4,000 (!) in non-refundable car upgrades. Sneaky. Link
◼ Unrelated: Tesla has crossed a valuation of $100b in market cap, the 2nd largest for a car manufacturer, passing Volkswagen but behind Toyota. Pretty crazy. What to make of it? For this valuation to be realistic, it “implies 1.4m cars being sold in 2025 at an 11% operating margin” (industry is typically more around 7%). We’ll find out soon enough with all big companies aggressively moving into electric cars. Link
◼ Reviews for the Samsung Galaxy Fold are in and, um, not good. Ouch. Link
◼ Journalism, Media, and Technology Trends and Predictions 2020: the shift towards “reader revenue” (people actually paying for news as opposed to just ads) continues. Link
◼ Despite criticism from Apple and others, EU parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of establishing a common charger for all mobile device makers across Europe. This may sounds like a good intention, but might not really be a good idea. Link
🕹 Games
◼ Scopely acquires Marvel Strike Force dev FoxNext Games from Disney. Link
◼ Scopely also continues its path of partnering with classic brands, this time with Hasbro and Scrabble. Link
◼ GameTrack Survey on in-game spending by children & parental control tools: only 1 in 5 use parental controls to keep taps on this. Shocker. Link (PDF)
◼ More fun with physics: Fortnite is getting the Chaos Physics Engine with Chapter 2, Season 2. Link
◼ Wccftech’s “Most Anticipated Strategy and Simulation Games of 2020”. Lots of old names in a classic genre that has not seen a lot of disruptive innovation in the past decade. Shame. Link
◼ Call of Duty League enjoys an esports rebirth with opening weekend. Link
◼ Nintendo confirms no Switch Pro in 2020. Never tmind “Pro”, I just want one for biiig hands so mine don’t cramp up after 20m of playing! Link
◼ Speaking of Switch, it’s one of the fastest-selling consoles ever. Over 50m units sold. Link
◼ The Sims 4, meanwhile, has reached over 20m players, which is pretty darn impressive for a (mostly) PC title. I don’t think anyone has really figured out yet how to make such a truly “sandbox” or “dollhouse” simulation game as F2P on mobile yet. Untapped potential? Link
◼ Warcraft 3: Reforged has launched - and some are grumpy about changes. What else is new? Link
😋 Tasty Tidbits
◼ Gorgeously drawn city street maps. Link
◼ The Top 10 all-time checkouts at the New York Public Library. I don’t think you’d guess #1. Fascinating list full of cultural insights. Link
◼ The tricky economics of all-you-can-eat buffets. Link
◼ How an opera gets made. Link (Video)
◼ Recommended soundtracks from mobile games. Link
I work for King. All views in this newsletter are personal and my own. They do not represent the views of King or ActivisionBlizzard. This newsletter is provided for informational purposes only and it’s surely no investment advice. This newsletter links to other websites and information obtained from third-party sources and I cannot ensure nor verify accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.